Much More Clean, Renewable Energy Could Be Integrated Into Grid — No Problem

“Energy Storage exists today in the forms of pumped hydropower, compressed air storage, flywheels, and batteries. Thermal energy storage in buildings and industrial settings is also used today. Storage provides the ability to both absorb electricity during hours of surplus and to dispatch it as a generator at a later time. Energy storage will always involve some level of losses—for example, it takes more energy to fill a pumped hydro storage reservoir than can be recovered by releasing the water. Today’s advanced storage technologies, such as batteries and flywheels, are relatively expensive and limited in scale, and have thus been applied mostly for specialty applications. However, lower-cost energy storage is an area of very active research and development, including efforts to improve batteries, develop hydrogen production and storage, and implement end-use storage such...